Western Europe

Covid-19 may be the moment sovereign wealth funds were made for: a shocking disruption to national economies that calls for a stable, patiently invested buffer. Funds have reacted in different ways, but they’re all bigger, shrewder and hopefully smarter than they were during the GFC.

The ECB has been pushing consolidation in the hope that it will make European banks more efficient and sustainable, but it will require large-scale job losses in a weak economy.

The G20 has called for renewed efforts to enhance slow and costly international payments. The founder of Worldpay and ClearBank may have the answer.

The lifeline that Berlin promised Germany’s businesses earlier this year was so large it made other corporate rescues in Europe look tame. In its determination to protect companies and jobs Berlin is stirring new debate, at home and abroad, about its growing role as an industrial decision maker and even shareholder. Can the country use its financial muscle to relaunch its own sputtering economic model?

The EU recovery fund could deliver so much more than just a short-term boost to peripheral sovereign bonds and European equities.

Despite the fanfare around their announcement, many of the proposed benefits of the 'fintech bridges' or bilateral agreements the UK government has reached with regulators around the world have yet to be realized.

Investors beware – countries in the region have been downgraded in Euromoney’s country risk survey this year.

The EU’s new recovery fund is a historic step to help the countries worst affected by Covid avoid a debt trap. If the EU’s short-term bills become a risk-free, interest-rate instrument, this temporary response to the deadly virus could become a permanent change to Europe’s capital markets

Exits at ABN Amro, including its big operation in commodity trade finance, raise questions about ING, as both firms enjoy much better returns in Dutch retail lending.

UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier is among bankers pushing for easier corporate access to government equity, as state-backed loans have heightened firms’ indebtedness, and firms’ sales struggle to recover.

With staff working from home and use of digital signatures not yet ubiquitous, banks need to step up security measures to prevent opportunistic criminals profiting from the disruption caused by coronavirus.

State-guaranteed lending to help hard-hit firms in Germany has lagged its equivalents in France, Spain, Italy and the UK. State development bank KfW says that’s a good thing.

Analysts expect the European recovery fund to underpin a strengthening of the single currency against the dollar over the rest of this year and beyond.

The coronavirus recession makes the need for bank consolidation in Europe even more pressing. But neither a more accommodative stance on M&A at the ECB nor the EU’s new recovery fund will be enough to make it happen.

With approval from Brussels, Germany can roll out Mittelstand recapitalizations through a new €600 billion Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds, or WSF – just in time for the country’s troubled but economically vital automotive sector.

Institutions don’t have to believe in any investment case for cryptocurrencies to garner returns from volatility in a growing, active, inefficient market.

Attorney Mel Georgie Racela runs the Anti-Money Laundering Council Secretariat in the Philippines, one of two agencies tasked with getting to the bottom with the country’s involvement in the Wirecard scandal. He talks to Chris Wright.

Customers are starting to embrace digital forwarders that provide supply chain finance services as well as digitized freight forwarding.

The country’s response to the scandal is a chance to show good governance.

Everyone wanted radical change at Commerzbank, except the bank itself.

Nationalist desperation to get ahead in fintech surely explains some of the spectacular regulatory failure in the Wirecard accounting scandal.

Now an independent firm outside ING, Katana is upgrading its algos and scanning more bonds for correlation trades between pairs not normally linked.

A complex investment in Wirecard by Deutsche Bank veterans now working at SoftBank has effectively compounded the eventual embarrassment for Germany Inc from the failure of the online payments firm.

Hedge funds have profited handsomely from the boom in equity capital markets, but retail buyers haven’t been completely excluded.

Fewer exits at lower prices will depress private equity returns for now, but the time is fast approaching to snap up bargains to boost performance.

Claudio de Sanctis says that the new unit he heads is the next step on Deutsche Bank’s journey to global scale in wealth management.

Firms such as Deposit Solutions and Raisin are thriving, partly because Europe’s wealthy are so risk averse.

Scarred by the lockdown, suppliers now want payment upfront while customers demand extended terms: a problem is brewing in B2B payments and receivables.

Online trade finance provider Stenn has raised several hundred million dollars during the past month and reckons it is well placed to help close the funding gap for manufacturers in developing economies.

International diversification counts for little in a pandemic, so shares in Sweden’s Handelsbanken have done better than most other lenders in Europe – but its loan book faces a stern test.